On the Banks of Plum Creek
Front dustjacket with Sewell illustration
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| Author | Laura Ingalls Wilder |
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| Illustrator |
Helen Sewell and Mildred Boyle Garth Williams (1953) |
| Country | United States |
| Series | Little House |
| Genre | Children's novel Family saga Western |
| Publisher | Harper & Brothers |
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Publication date
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October 20, 1937 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 239; 338 pp. |
| OCLC | 1291009 |
| LC Class | PZ7.W6461 On |
| Preceded by | Little House on the Prairie (novel) |
| Followed by | By the Shores of Silver Lake |
On the Banks of Plum Creek is an autobiographical children's novel written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published in 1937, the fourth of nine books in her Little House series. It is based on a few years of her childhood when the Ingalls family lived at Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota, during the 1870s. The original dustjacket proclaimed, "The true story of an American pioneer family by the author of Little House in the Big Woods".
Plum Creek was a Newbery Honor book in 1938, as were the next four Little House books through 1944.
Having left their little house on the Kansas prairie, the Ingalls family travels by covered wagon to Minnesota and settles in a dugout on the banks of Plum Creek. Pa trades his horses Pet and Patty to the property owner (a man named Hanson, who wants to go west) for the land and crops. He later gets two new horses as Christmas presents for the family, which Laura and her sister Mary name "Sam" and "David". Pa soon builds a new, above-ground, wooden house for the family, trusting that their first crop of wheat will pay for the lumber and materials.
Now that they live near a town, Laura and Mary go to school for the first time. There they make friends, but also meet the town storekeeper's daughter, Nellie Oleson, who makes fun of Laura and Mary for being "country girls." Laura and Mary attend a party at the Olesons' home, and Ma has Laura and Mary invite all the girls (including Nellie) to a party at their house to reciprocate.
The family goes through very hard times when grasshoppers (actually Rocky Mountain Locusts) decimate the much-anticipated wheat crop, and lay so many eggs that there is no hope of a crop the following year. For two harvest seasons, Pa is forced to walk three hundred miles east to find work on farms that escaped the grasshopper plague.
The book ends with Laura's father returning safely to the house after becoming lost near their home during a severe four-day blizzard. Laura is portrayed in this book as being seven to nine years old.
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Wikipedia